There are many people in this thread I would like to thank for their comments. I also suffer from GID. As I child who did not grow up in the Church, I remember praying to God wishing that He would transform me so that I could stop feeling wrong and live my life the way I felt it was supposed to be. He did transform me, but not in the way that I expected. At the age of 17, I was baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This put me on a difficult path but on a path that was more than worth it.
After graduating high school, I moved out West and attended BYU-Idaho before going on a mission. My mission was very hard for me; it was not what I expected it would be. However, my experiences, though difficult, helped change my life. After my mission, I married a wonderful young woman (who is taller than me and knows about my problems) and we just had our first baby boy. Throughout my whole life and up to this point, I have suffered from GID, but I have not let that change my life or who I am. I am a son of God, sealed to an amazing woman, father of an angelic child, and He has a plan for me.
I know that because I have tried to live the commandments of the Lord, our Heavenly Father has blessed me with strength that is not my own. My internal problems have not vanished; nor do they feel bottled up deep inside. I feel that I have become at peace with my feelings. I imagine that my feelings are locked up in a cage deep inside me; she, not at peace, might rattle a cup against the bars from time to time or even scream bloody murder (which makes it harder to ignore), but that does not mean I need to open the cage and let those feelings out.
Many of us with these feelings tend to believe that no one else knows what it is like to suffer this way. That is a mistake. While our problem may not come from our own personal actions or the problems of others may not be as life-changing, I believe it is insulting to degrade the inner feelings of others by saying that ours is a harder lot. I have seen good people struggle on problems that would seem infantile to others, yet I know that what they are feeling is just as real and just as painful.
We cannot let our temptations lead us down the easy path away from our Heavenly Father. Although the path is hard and I cannot live the way that I would wish, I know that the path that Heavenly Father has chosen for me is a better one. Already I have experienced and grown a hundred times more than if I had chosen to follow those feelings. Every day for the rest of my life I will have to wake up and look at the small, effeminate body I was given in the mirror and prepare for the fight of that day. I cannot wait to wake up in the morning and take on that challenge.
We, as a people, have so much to gain from taking the hard path. Our lot is a hard one, but that just means that when we overcome it, we will be that much stronger. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there are many General and Auxiliary Authorities who suffer from our temptations; it would have to take a challenge of that magnitude to produce such strong men and women of faith.
Finally, I would hope members would not make excuses for us. Yes, we need all of the love and support you can offer us; that is not the problem I speak of. There are other members who are praised by the world for their “open-minded-ness.” I have been given excuses from this people my whole life. “You’re just a new convert,” they would say, “You don’t have to serve a mission, that does not apply to you. That would be too hard.”
If I had listened to that, I would have never grown, met my wife, had my child; I would have had none of that. We cannot listen to the easy words of members who tell us that we can live our lives the way we want that that everything will be okay. That will just rob us of the blessings that our Father is waiting to bestow upon us. Heavenly Father has a plan for each of us, but He also has a Plan for the whole human race.
I applaud members of the Church who suffer from GID or same sex attraction who still enter the Temple and are sealed for eternity with their spouses, have children and who choose the plan God has for them and not follow the temptations or selfish thoughts that plague them and us each day. We need to have them as our examples so that we may follow the hard path and know that it might not get easier, but it sure as hell will get better. Not just better, but the best our lives could ever be.
~ Nate
